Relatively recently, I posted on the question of whether a Bureau de Spank desiring to rely on a practitioner’s dishonesty or other form of conscious wrongdoing must expressly allege it in the charge, and discussed Walter v Council of Queensland Law Society Incorporated (1988) 77 ALR 228 at 234; [1988] HCA 8. Now, in Legal [...]
Entries Tagged as 'concurrent duties'
Commissioner’s obligation to charge dishonesty if he intends to allege it
December 4th, 2009 · No Comments
Tags: Discipline · Ethics · Legal Profession Act · Legal Services Commissioner · Misconduct · Practising certificates · Professional regulation · Striking off · Trust money · amendment · appeals · concurrent duties · conflicts · current client and past client · duty and duty · jurisdiction · natural justice · procedure · trust monies · wilful disregard for rules
Conflict of duties and the limited retainer
April 12th, 2009 · 2 Comments
This is a post about David v David [2009] NSWCA 8 (the decision at first instance is at [2007] NSWSC 855). Karl Suleman has been good to professional negligence lawyers. He procured other Assyrians to invest in excellent sounding supermarket trolley schemes. ‘Give me $50,000′, he said to one investor, ‘and shopping trolleys will pay [...]
Tags: Ethics · Fiduciary duties · concurrent duties · conflicts · duty and duty · duty and interest
Solicitor gets three year break for multiple conflict findings
November 29th, 2008 · No Comments
In Legal Services Commissioner v DJMH [2008] VCAT 2301, Deputy President McNamara’s tribunal ordered the solicitor not to practice before 1 July 2011 for multiple findings of acting in the face of a conflict. It is unfortunate that the reasons for decision do not allow an understanding of what was alleged. It had something to [...]
Tags: Discipline · Ethics · Misconduct · civil-disciplinary interplay · common law · concurrent duties · conflicts · duty and duty
Issac’s holiday; plea bargaining in disciplinary charges examined
October 10th, 2008 · No Comments
Issac’s style of legal letter writing is legendary. There are some quite extensive private collections out there. I recall one letter said to have been penned by the man himself which began ‘Dear Sir, you are a petulant lunatic,’ and after some substantive words continued ‘You are a very small cog in a very big [...]
Tags: Discipline · Fiduciary duties · Misconduct · Practising certificates · Trust money · concurrent duties · conflicts · procedure
Application by appellant to remove respondent’s trial counsel from appeal dismissed
February 5th, 2008 · No Comments
In Chen v Chan [2008] VSCA 2, President Maxwell and Justice of Appeal Redlich dismissed an application by the appellant for an order enjoining the respondent’s solicitor and counsel from acting in the appeal. The applicant alleged that there had been wrongdoing by the respondent’s lawyers at the trial. In fact that was [...]
Tags: Abuse of process · Ethics · Professional regulation · concurrent duties · conflicts · duty and interest · duty to court · litigation ethics
A non-exhaustive bibliography on lawyers’ conflicts of duties between insurer and insured
October 28th, 2007 · No Comments
Speaking, as I was in the last post, about AILA’s Geoff Masel lecture series, here is the 2006 lecture, delivered by Tony Scotford of Ebsworth & Ebsworth’s Sydney office. It is yet another contribution to the much talked about but little done about problem of insurer-appointed defence lawyers in liability claims and their potentially [...]
Tags: Ethics · concurrent duties · conflicts · duties of confidentiality · duty and duty
Solicitors’ liability paper; conflicts of lawyers acting for insurer and insured
August 8th, 2007 · No Comments
Here’s a link to a little article on the law relating to the possible conflicts of duties faced by a lawyer retained by a liability insurer to act for its insured in the defence of proceedings against the insured. It discusses 3 English cases:
Brown v Guardian Royal Exchange Assurance;
TSB Bank v Robert Irvin; and
Zurich Professional [...]
Tags: Ethics · Negligence · concurrent duties · conflicts · duties of confidentiality · duty and duty
Freshfields partner gets whacked $140,000 over conflict of duties to concurrent clients
August 8th, 2007 · No Comments
Freshfields used to be Marks & Spencer’s go-to lawyers. Then they fell out of favour a bit. But they were still acting for Marks ‘n’ Sparks on one relatively small contract. A key partner then decided to accept instructions to act for a consortium trying to take over the supermarket chain. If the takeover [...]
Tags: Discipline · Ethics · concurrent duties · conflicts · duty and duty
The incapacitated client
July 18th, 2007 · 1 Comment
Here’s an interesting case about lawyers, incapacitated clients, paternalism, and the right to be represented. An Alzheimers affected woman hired a beak to oppose a guardianship application brought by her brother. The court appointed another lawyer to act for her, suspecting that the man she professed to want to marry had in fact [...]
Tags: Ethics · concurrent duties · conflicts · duty and duty · mental illness
Chinese wall holds up at investment bank
July 16th, 2007 · No Comments
Update, 13 November: Clayton Utz’s take on the case here.
Here’s a long Sydney Morning Herald article about the latest big Chinese wall case, this time not in the context of a law firm, but of Citigroup, an investment bank. Here’s The Age’s shorter version. The case is ASIC v Citigroup Global Markets Australia [...]
Tags: Ethics · concurrent duties · conflicts · duty and duty · duty and interest · prosecutorial failures

